Alan Carney

Alan Carney, born David John Boughal on December 22, 1909, in Manhattan, was an American actor and comedian whose career spanned vaudeville, film, television, and Broadway. The youngest of four children, he was raised by Irish immigrant parents, Ellen "Nellie" (née Kearney) and Edward Francis Boughal. The family moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn sometime between 1920 and 1929.

After completing high school, Boughal took a job in his father's print shop, though he harbored no intention of making it his livelihood. His ambitions lay in performance, and he began imitating the shop's customers as an informal outlet for those aspirations. An amateur night appearance led to a spot in a vaudeville act at Proctor's Theater in Yonkers, New York. Around this time, he adopted the stage name Alan Carney, a modified form of his mother's maiden name, Kearney. When the act's headliner, Marion Eddy, went on tour, Carney traveled with her, accumulating years of vaudeville experience before transitioning to film.

In 1943, Carney made his screen debut in the RKO Radio Pictures production Gildersleeve's Bad Day. His path to Hollywood has been recounted in at least two slightly differing versions, both crediting film producer David Hempstead with discovering him. One account, published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in March 1943, describes Hempstead catching Carney's act at the Crystal Terrace Room of St. Louis's Park Plaza Hotel, leaving his card, and extending an invitation to visit him in Hollywood. Carney eventually accepted, which led to an RKO contract and a notable supporting role as the bodyguard "Crunk" in the 1943 romantic comedy Mr. Lucky, starring Cary Grant. That same year, RKO paired Carney with comedian Wally Brown as the studio's response to Abbott and Costello. The team appeared together in a series of low-budget starring vehicles and co-starred in Step Lively, a musical remake of the Marx Brothers film Room Service, in which George Murphy occupied the lead role with Brown and Carney as his assistants. The duo also participated in a live USO tour organized by the studio. Their partnership at RKO concluded after the 1946 film Genius at Work, when the studio terminated both contracts.

Carney continued working as a supporting player in film and television throughout the following decades. He played Mayor Dawgmeat in the 1959 musical film Li'l Abner and appeared as Harry Nolan in the Have Gun Will Travel episode "The Five Books of Owen Deaver," which aired on April 25, 1958. During the 1960s and 1970s, he worked prolifically for Walt Disney Productions. Although Carney and Brown both appeared in Who Was That Lady? in 1960 and in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor in 1961, the two did not share any scenes in either film. The pair had been scheduled to reunite for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963, but Brown died before filming commenced. Carney's final screen appearance came in Disney's Herbie Rides Again, released in 1974, after his death.

Alongside his screen work, Carney maintained a presence on the stage. He appeared on Broadway between 1952 and 1956, with credits including Fanny and Whistler's Grandmother.

In his personal life, Carney married Elinor D. Miller in 1936. The couple divorced sometime between 1947 and 1953. Carney died on May 2, 1973, in Van Nuys, California, at the age of 63, from a heart attack brought on by the excitement of winning the daily double at Hollywood Park Racetrack.